Summary of Boellstorff (2008), Coming of Age in Second Life

NB – See previous blog entries for more detailed notes on each chapter

PART I: SETTING THE VIRTUAL STAGE

Chapter 1. The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry, 3-31

The book is an ethnography of the virtual world Second Life (SL) from June 2004 to January 2007. The aim is to rehabilitate the notion of ‘virtual’ by studying virtual worlds in their own terms. Inquiry into both the historical continuities and changes of this virtual world. The author argues that the notion of posthuman is misleading, for it is in being virtual that we are human. Instead he sets out to investigate virtual worlds as ‘techne’ (human practice that engages with the world and creates a new world as well as a new person: homo cyber). Second…